You live in Russia. Which means that, unfortunately, you are most likely breathing polluted air and drinking water full of harmful contaminants. And you get angry and ask: why the hell doesn’t the state care? Watch this video and you’ll find out.
Because every Russian problem ultimately comes down to corruption.
A terrible environmental disaster has occurred in Norilsk. The largest in the entire history of the Arctic.
The scale of it is such that Putin declared a federal state of emergency. Just think about that. They didn’t do it because of the epidemic, but they did here. So yes, this is a truly enormous disaster.
So what is happening on the ground? Of course, officials are trying to cover everything up. And the situation has gotten so bad that even officials themselves can’t take it anymore. An employee of Norilsk’s environmental watchdog, who was the first to arrive at the scene of the accident, even recorded a 40-minute video statement in which he describes how they first refused to let him in, then refused to accept his inspection reports. And in the end, he was simply removed from the investigation. He openly says that his colleagues are now committing official misconduct.
In other words, the agency responsible for investigating an environmental disaster is busy covering up the traces of that environmental disaster. And interestingly, the head of Rosprirodnadzor, Svetlana Radionova, as reported by the media, flew to Norilsk on a luxury business jet owned by Norilsk Nickel. The very company whose fault has left rivers flowing through the Russian Arctic with water that can literally catch fire. At the very least, that is strange. An inspection is underway that could fine oligarch Vladimir Potanin, who owns Norilsk Nickel, hundreds of billions of rubles. And for some reason, that inspection is flying on a private jet owned by Potanin.
So we at the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) decided to take a closer look at this wonderful lady, Svetlana Radionova, the head of Rosprirodnadzor. And introduce you to her as well.
Despite her glamorous image, our heroine is not especially fond of publicity.
To our surprise, we immediately discovered that Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state media and internet censor, is just as concerned about her reputation as it is about the reputation of Nailya Asker-zade: by court order, more than 100 websites about the seemingly unknown and unremarkable official Radionova have been blocked.
The very fact that she is virtually unknown is a huge misunderstanding. This woman, whom most of you are seeing for the first time, is the country’s top environmental official. And if “environmental issues” sound abstract to you — “what is it, birds, fish, butterflies?” — then let’s put it simply. Garbage landfills — whether in the Moscow region or notorious ones like Shiyes — fall under her responsibility. The black sky over Krasnoyarsk and the million city residents who choke on it every winter — that’s her domain too. Poisoned water in Chelyabinsk. The scandal over whale prisons and animal abuse — that’s also on her. And now there is a river containing 20,000 tons of diesel fuel, where most likely all life will die for decades to come — and that too falls under our heroine today.
The garbage scandals alone have triggered waves of protests across Russia, nearly caused a passenger plane crash, and led to two governors losing their jobs. We have all heard about that and know it well. But not about the official responsible for making sure none of it happens.
So, Svetlana Gennadyevna Radionova, a young official with an impressive career.
In 1999, she began working for the prosecutor’s office, first in the Moscow region, in Zhukovsky, and then in Moscow itself. She worked in the Investigative Committee as an adviser and head of an inspection unit. Later she became deputy head of Rostekhnadzor, where she oversaw the oil industry, and in 2018 she took the position she holds now — head of Rosprirodnadzor. The agency supervises the use of natural resources and environmental protection.
An absolutely perfect, distilled bureaucratic career. She entered government service at 22 and has never worked anywhere else. Her financial disclosures fully reflect that image. In the latest available one, for 2017, we see an income of 400,000 rubles a month and a modest 60 sq. m apartment. Nothing else — no country house, no car, no paranormal income. A person living on her salary. Our modest Cinderella.
And her family is just as modest. Her parents are pensioners, and her father used to own a small food shop.
Her brother is a prosecutor, subordinate to our Montenegrin friend, Moscow chief prosecutor Denis Popov. Svetlana’s younger brother, Grigory Radionov, was appointed prosecutor for Moscow’s Western District at the age of 33. And he too has no wealthy wife or suspicious billions. Just a prosecutor’s income of 150,000 rubles a month.
And the only other person the media constantly link to Radionova is another servant of the people, Anton Alexeyevich Ustinov.
In the early 2000s, he worked at the Federal Tax Service, incidentally alongside Mishustin, became famous for his role in the Yukos case, and then served as Sechin’s personal aide. After that, he even became an adviser to President Putin. He oversaw issues in the fuel and energy sector. Apparently, he and Putin worked so well together at that point that in 2016 Ustinov was appointed chairman of the board of SOGAZ — an insurance company cleverly taken from Gazprom and now owned by Putin’s nephew and Putin’s cronies, the Kovalchuks.
So, the media persistently write that Radionova owes her career success precisely to Ustinov. We do not know how true that is, but we can confirm that their connection goes beyond having studied at the same university in Saratov 25 years ago. According to Novaya Gazeta, Radionova and Ustinov regularly fly somewhere together. And to our surprise, we discovered that Radionova’s father, for some reason, posts links to photos of Anton Ustinov on his page on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network).
At the same time, Ustinov is definitely not Svetlana’s husband — she is unmarried, and Ustinov himself is married to another woman. In any case, even if there is some complicated love triangle there, they can sort it out themselves. We are interested in corruption.
And now we come to what has been hidden from view. The first alarm bell was recently published information on one of the Telegram channels about Radionova’s apartment on the French Riviera. A very loud alarm bell indeed, especially considering that Novaya Gazeta writes that Radionova flew to Nice more than 40 times over the last four-plus years.
Frankly, she should have flown to Shiyes 40 times, but for some reason she flew to Nice instead. We double-checked, ordered the records, and it is all true. The apartment was purchased in 2017 and registered to a company owned by her parents, Gennady and Tatyana Radionov. A very nice building, sea view, right in the heart of the high life — between Nice and Cannes. The apartment was bought for half a million euros.
Half a million euros at the exchange rate for the month of purchase came to a little over 33 million rubles. And you know, if that were the end of it, one might perhaps say — to hell with Radionova and her French real estate. Maybe they really did sell EVERYTHING, take out loans, and fulfill the dream of a lifetime — retirement by the sea and a fresh croissant every morning.
But of course, that was not the end of it.
First, at that same French address, we found a second previously unknown company connected to the Radionovs. The company is identical to the first one, the parents’ company, except that it is registered to Oksana Gonchar, the common-law wife of Svetlana’s brother, Radionov, the prosecutor for Moscow’s Western Administrative District.
Here we can see that she lists her home address in Moscow — the very same only 60 sq. m apartment of Svetlana Radionova from her disclosure.
Another apartment in France is registered to this company, but which one exactly and for how much, we will only be able to tell you later — the Riviera land registry offices have not yet sent us the necessary extract.
Radionova’s parents likewise list their Moscow address in the French documents — also on Furmanny Lane, just a few buildings away. And it immediately becomes clear that they did not scrape together money for the French apartments from the bottom of the barrel. A 120 sq. m apartment in central Moscow is still owned by Svetlana Radionova’s mother, Tatyana, and such a place is worth at least 86 million rubles. This is not some inheritance from a grandmother, but a relatively recent purchase from 2011.
Owned by this same mother of the head of Rosprirodnadzor — and of the Moscow prosecutor — we found yet another apartment. And, you will be surprised to hear, it also did not have to be sold in order to buy property in Nice. It is a huge 189 sq. m apartment in one of Moscow’s most elite and recognizable residential complexes on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. Living there is Sobyanin’s deputy and city hall’s chief crook, Pyotr Biryukov; TV propagandists Kiselyov and Gabrelyanov live there too; and Sobyanin’s deputy Natalia Sergunina owns a huge restaurant space there. See what a nice building it is. It constantly turns up in our investigations. Moscow has a House of Writers, and then there is the House of Crooks.
And in it is an apartment belonging to the mother of our modest official today, Radionova. Such an apartment costs about 210 million rubles. It was bought three years after the apartment on Furmanny Lane, in 2014, when her daughter was overseeing inspections of oil companies at Rostekhnadzor, and her son had only just started working at the Moscow prosecutor’s office.
And then things get truly miraculous. We order records for several neighboring apartments in the same residential complex — literally to look at the neighbors on the same floor. And we discover yet another apartment, 162 sq. m, bought in 2018 by Svetlana Radionova’s father, Gennady. That is another 180 million rubles.
We look around and then notice the neighboring, THIRD apartment, again around 160 sq. m, and once again owned by the pensioner Gennady Grigoryevich Radionov.
So that you do not think we made a mistake or slipped in unrelated people with the same surname: the apartment on Furmanny Lane is declared as being used by the Moscow prosecutor — Radionova’s brother. And one of the apartments in “Legends of Tsvetnoy” is used by his children. It was recently re-registered to Oksana Gonchar, the same former wife of the prosecutor whom we already found in France. So they are neighbors in Nice, and here too.
This is not just some Moscow real estate. It is the best Moscow real estate — the most prestigious, the most elite — and it belongs not to oligarchs or businessmen, but to the elderly parents of two officials. The combined annual income of those officials would be enough for at most 5 or 6 square meters in this building. Probably not even enough for a parking space.
By the way, before we move too far away from the residential complex on Tsvetnoy Boulevard: right between the apartments of Radionova’s father and mother, we found another apartment, 194 sq. m. It belongs to that same Anton Ustinov so often linked to Radionova.
In 2014, when Ustinov was working as Putin’s adviser, his mother, 58-year-old Natalya Serova, became the owner of this apartment for 215 million rubles. She bought it almost at the same time as Radionova’s mother bought hers. And just a couple of months ago — now that Ustinov is at SOGAZ, apparently it is allowed — the apartment was re-registered in his own name.
Returning to official Radionova’s family, let us sum up. We found 4 apartments in Moscow owned by her pensioner parents worth 655 million rubles. Plus another 40 million in Nice. Add their country house outside Moscow — which the pensioners also have — a 600 sq. m house and a 3,400 sq. m plot of land (record 1, record 2) and the total comes to 720 million rubles.
This level of wealth cannot be explained by anything. It is so outrageous that one can calmly and without any doubt say: she stole it, received it as bribes for something she did at Rostekhnadzor or Rosprirodnadzor. She put everything in her parents’ names so that her own disclosure would look as pristine as it does now.
In addition to the four apartments already mentioned, her parents also owned two more new Moscow apartments with a total area of 230 sq. m (one, the second), bought and sold within a few months of purchase. That is several hundred million more. In other words, it looks as though bribes are literally being paid in apartments.
Look at these photos — huge bags stuffed with cash, boxes of dollars, and suitcases full of watches.
The photos were taken at the home and office of Radionova’s former subordinate, Grigory Slabikov, head of Rostekhnadzor for the Northwestern District. Like his colleague, our heroine today, he declared a very modest income — 1.5 million rubles. At his home they found a billion. In cash.
This was merely Radionova’s subordinate, and not even the most senior one. Now imagine how much Potanin will pay off — both directly to the Kremlin and to Radionova — to bury this scandal. In any other country, Potanin would cease to be an oligarch; fines of this size would force him to pay up. But here — make no mistake — he will strike a deal.
All these apartments and suitcases of cash lying under apartment beds have been paid for with your health. In Chelyabinsk or Krasnoyarsk, you cough from the smog because instead of installing purification systems, companies simply bring bribes to Radionova. Your children in the Vologda region drink water that makes their teeth crumble, but Radionova’s agency will stir only when it is time for someone to buy her yet another apartment as a bribe. In Moscow, you will walk hand in hand with your children while warm air from a waste incineration plant blows at your back, but the inspector’s device will never show an excess reading. Because someone bought somebody yet another apartment in the “Legends of Tsvetnoy” complex.
Putin’s government is made up of thieves. And now they are dragging you into a sham vote to reset Putin’s terms and make him ruler for life. Do not recognize the resetting of Putin’s terms. Do not take part in this fraud, or vote against it.
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